The Choice Is Yours

I previously decided that I would post blogs once a week on Wednesdays. This a good proposition to make sure that I don’t fall behind on my blogging. But I’ve decided that I’m not going to impose a limit on myself. At the bare minimum, I’ll submit by Wednesday, but if I find that by Wednesday, I have something else to say, then I’ll just post twice—or three times, or however often I feel like it. While I’ll always keep in mind that imaginary audience of fans that I soon hope to develop (who are more than likely just to be friends when I decide I’m ready to share the permalink with them), blogging is cathartic. As I tell my students, any story comes from a writer’s need to share something. And today, I’m feeling particularly needy. Today I started work off kilter. I was almost a half hour late. And I could sit here and play the blame game with a hundred different reasons as to why I was late: • My husband turned the light off in the bedroom so I overslept. • Traffic was backed up on the beltway. • I was stuck at two cycles of the same light when I got off the beltway. • I got stuck behind a school bus that made four different stops. • I got stuck behind a slow dump truck. I could even come up with excuses that are focused on me: • I cooked a large meal and then worked out too late last night and was tired. • I had to stop for gas. • I was already late and had to stop for my usual morning coffee and run back into my car to grab my wallet. But the truth of the matter was that I made a choice. I made an entirely conscious choice this morning NOT to get up at 6:15, or 6:25, 6:35, or three other times my snooze button went off with my phone. In fact, my active choice was to remain in bed. My husband was gone, my son was sleeping peacefully beside me, and that bed just felt good. Not just good, but DAMN good. And so I made the choice to not get up until 7:10, the time when I am normally dressed and prepping my son to get to get dressed. As a result, all those other chain reactions (bullets 2-5 in the first list) happened. Sure I did have to stop for gas this morning; stopping last night in all that ridiculous weather was not an option for me. Normally, when things are out of my control, I say “oh well” and chalk it up to the Lord making me avoid some calamity or horrendous accident. And that very well may have been it, but today I don’t think that was it at least not by itself. Because I do have control of two things: my body and my mind. And today they dictated my actions in a negative way, keeping me doing one of the things I am supposed to do, and that is to be to work on time. I remember spending the weekend with my mom and grandma recently and turning on the TV to this television evangelist who’s featured in Virginia on Sunday mornings. He was dressed in khakis and a button-down shirt and was completely casual on this stage set that you would think was for a comedian or a play. He was so interesting that I ended up watching his sermons back to back. And his final one was a question: “Are you taking responsibility for your life, really?” The “really” was emphasized with a pause, and he used the story of Adam and Even explaining to Lord why they’d eaten the apple. Adam said Eve told him to do it, and Eve said the serpent told her to do it. The evangelist’s point was that neither of them took responsibility for what they did, and as a result, all the generations after them to this very day are inherently separated from the face of God. My goal is to get closer.